Applicant Bias: Evidence from a field experiment

Abstract

Do job seekers consider the race or gender of an employer when applying for a job? While we have extensive research on employer-side discrimination, we know less about employee-side biases and their consequences. In this study, we examine how the gender and race of the employer shapes the willingness of prospective employees to apply for a job. To do this, we need a setting where we can observe not only the applicants who decided to apply but also those who decided not to apply. We address this challenge by conducting a field experiment where we advertise real jobs for real applicants and vary the demographic composition of the employer. We find that applicants were no less likely to apply to jobs in companies with white female founders than white male founders. In contrast, they were significantly less likely to apply to Black founders and when they did apply, they requested ten percent higher salary. In addition, the more qualified a candidate the less likely they were to apply to Black founders. Our findings indicate that Black founders face significant bias from job applicants and, solely because of their race, attract fewer high-quality applicants and face higher salary demands. We conducted a second experiment to help distinguish between several potential explanations and find no evidence that applicants fear that the organization will underperform or that the founders are less qualified. By contrast, white applicants fear that they will not be good cultural fits to startups run by Black founders.